Ben Simmons Isn't Gone, He's Just Forgotten
“This poor girl is going to be lost without me,” you say to yourself as you break off your engagement to your significant other of four years. “She never appreciated me. Sure, I had weaknesses, but who doesn’t? What about all the great stuff I did? What about all the good times we had? She’ll miss me when I’m gone!”
Smash cut to a few weeks after the wedding was called off, and there you are, playing Xbox in your lonely apartment and hearing from all of your friends and plenty of your enemies about how, strangely enough, she doesn’t seem to miss you at all. She is doing just fine. She already had a lot going for her. A career, a list of friends longer than her arm, brains, beauty… she was happy with you, and as it turns out, she can be happy without you, too.
Rather than being gone but not forgotten, you’re just forgotten:
Ben Simmons has not accepted any off-court help from the 76ers and there's no timetable for his return, sources have told @ramonashelburne.
"There is frustration mounting." pic.twitter.com/0DqunuUoZx
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) November 2, 2021
The Philadelphia 76ers have played seven games in this season, one without both Joel Embiid and Tobias Harris (a win) and all of them without All-Star point guard Ben Simmons. As the saga of what Simmons would choose to do played out in the preseason, there was a fair amount of concern and doubt surrounding what the Sixers would be if Simmons didn’t play. As it is happening in real time, a lot of that concern was probably unnecessary.
The Sixers are 5-2, and their past two victories – wire-to-wire jobs against the Atlanta Hawks and the Portland Trail Blazers – showcased the depth of the roster and the new style the Sixers can show now that one of their players isn’t spending 32+ minutes per game never shooting the basketball. The obvious beneficiaries thus far have been Seth Curry (16.4 points per game), Tyrese Maxey (14 points per game) and Furkan Korkmaz (10.9 points per game). Of those three, only Curry averaged double digits last season (12.5). Understandably, Maxey has seen the quickest and greatest uptick – his average this season is almost double the eight points he averaged last season. It’s the strangest thing: Good shooters who aren’t afraid to shoot and who get more minutes score more points than guys who can only dunk the ball.
Perhaps the most surprising revelation has been that, while the Sixers are better offensively, their defensive rating (estimate of points allowed per 100 possessions) is almost identical to last season. The going theory over the summer was that the defense would suffer greatly without Simmons, a selection to the 2020-2021 NBA All-Defensive Team. Returns this season are early, but the exceptional rebounding of new addition Andre Drummond (10 per game) and the enhanced thievery of Matisse Thybulle (2.4 steals and 1.4 blocks per game) are imperceptibly filling in some of the gaps Simmons has left.
Are the Sixers better off without Ben Simmons? That’s a tough argument to make – they were the #1 seed in last year’s Eastern Conference playoffs, they won 49 games in a shortened season, they were a woeful Game 7 against the Atlanta Hawks from the Eastern Conference Finals. But that wasn’t the question that was being asked this summer. The question this summer was, without Simmons, exactly how much worse are the Sixers going to be? As it turns out, so far anyway, not much.
Ben Simmons is not gone, not yet. But he’s well on his way to being forgotten.